"but I'm his father, not his friend."
You can be their parent, or you can try to be their frind. But you can't be both all the time, and prent trumps. Kids need examples and thrive under loving discipline. Friends they can find in school and the neighbourhood.
And I agree. They aren't happier if you dress them like street-walkers.
I have this fight with my ex-step-daughter-hair-dresser-slut who tries to turn the 13-year-old granddaughter into Harriet Ho; push-ups, butt-display jeans, tight shirts and all.
What does the granddaughter think? Well, before school started last, we went out to the stores to get her school supplies. Gym shorts. 'Mom' (the hair-whore) had already gotten some. Grandkid asked if we could find some different ones, she'd even be willing to chip in out of her allowance money to buy them, because the ones 'Mom' bought were:
Too short and too tight.
She said she felt uncomfortable and a little ashamed wearing them. We bought her different ones. She wears them to gym class.
Now, my granddaughter is one of the prettiest young girls you'll ever see, and that's not just grandpappy prejudice. She's going to be stunning in another five or six years. She's pretty now, pretty enough that guys in their twenties have hit on her on quite a few occasions. She usually frosts them with a look that makes holes in their head, then says in a really disgusted voice, "I'm thirteen. Go away, you pervert." I do very much love that kid.
But SHE doesn't think she should dress like that. Can't convince her mother, who keeps bringing home low-rise jeans and spray-on-tight mini-shirts that cover nothing. I want to clobber her 'Mom' (and all the quote marks are because she's not acting much like a mother, in my opinion, ersatz at best) for being such a panderer. |
